What is the process of "creating a SAP code"?

December 17, 2015 8:27 AM

Our division recently placed an order to a new vendor for some supplies needed for a project. The vendor received the purchase order a week ago. Today we asked about the status of the order (and for a shipment tracking number); the vendor responded that they are "in the process of creating a SAP code", and that they hope to give us a delivery date next week. What is a 101-level explanation of what the vendor is doing when creating this code?

Is it reasonable that it would take over a week to do this, and what factors determine how long this process would take?

I am only peripheral to business operations, and I have only a vague understanding of what SAP is, but I would like to understand better. I found some forums about creating "transaction codes", but I have no context for understanding what they are talking about. This question is as much for my own curiosity and future interest in working with SAP as it is for the immediate business reasons of explaining why it is taking so long to get our supplies.

posted by mean square error to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Reasonable ? Well ... You ordered something, via PO, I assume 30-day net, and are a new customer. Unless there are warehouse or production problems (you ordered a gazillion left handed widgets), they should have been able to ship in a day or two, or say it's on backorder to you.

They apparently have a process where they need to integrate you into their database (CRM) and tick all those boxes before they'll ship. Saying that takes a week sounds bogus to me (not reasonable). Unless their processing person is on vacation and/or they're running short staffed for the holidays. (It should be a pretty easy data entry task into SAP - customer, address, order history, etc etc unless they have a bad workflow setup)

You can decide if you want to keep working with a supplier who can't ship a standard order in a reasonable amount of time, and when asked claims process is the problem. Unless they are the only place who can offer what you're ordering, I'd be looking for another vendor.
posted by k5.user at 8:53 AM on December 17, 2015

If you are a new customer of the vendor then they are probably having to have you set up in their SAP software as a customer. Depending on their business process this could be a lengthy process.

It could go through multiple approval processes. Also if they have other systems that integrate with their SAP system it may be that they are having to communicate your information to these other integrated systems. They may have to wait for this other system or entity to acknowledge that they have setup things properly on their end.

I don't know anything about what you have are purchasing but an example of this kind of process may be that say you are purchasing 50 widgets from Acme Widget Corp. The would enter in you as a customer and you would get a unique id in their system. This may mean they would have to integrate this information with their financial software to make it ready to receive the payment and route it to the correct places. Also they may not actually make the widgets and have outsourced that to another company and it may be that they would have to communicate information to them before products could be shipped. Anyone of these could cause a delay. It could be as simple as the person who enters in or approves a new account may just be out that day. You would be surprised how even large corporations will rely on just one person to do some important thing in a business project and they do not have a backup and you just have to wait.

Short story is yes it could take a while because of the bureaucracy of business process and integration points. The SAP systems is going to be configured to work however they do their business process so SAP itself is probably not the hold up.
posted by Justin Case at 8:57 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Focusing just on the request, assuming you are already in their system.

What it likely means is that the supplies you ordered aren't in the vendor's database. They will likely have to do the following things on their end:

1) Get a quote from the Distributor (disti) or, if it's directly sourced, from the Manufacturer.
2) Convert the pricing to the vendor base price (most vendors have a small base markup they apply to their price).
3) Submit a request for the new 'SAP code', which is really a new entry for those supplies in the vencor's database.
4) Submit the disti or manufacturer quote and pricing to a Procurement Team that puts the new price in SAP.
5) Create the quote for your division.

Step 1 depends on a third party, which can sometimes take days (esp. around busy pre-holiday and end-of-year rush).
Step 2 can depend on how busy the salesperson or their helper is, but should be quick.
Step 3 is given to a small team serving the entire organization's need for new SAP codes, so they could be backed up and take a day or more.
Step 4, see Step 3.
Step 5, see Step 2.

So yeah, during end-of-year, that one week delay could happen. I bet they're faster in non-busy times.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:05 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Alternately, they may have a day of the week they enter these as a batch, after doing any required background checks or run your company's Dun and Bradstreet / Credit info.
posted by tilde at 9:37 AM on December 17, 2015

I would expect that the big hold up is...entering you as a customer. Which, as a data entry task, takes 45-90 seconds.

As a business process, however, it could take weeks. They may require a credit check, reference check, obtaining a letter of credit from your company's bank, the blessing of a single gatekeeper (who might be out on vacation), waiting for the correct waning phase of the moon, or one AR clerk is holding out on another to see who can put off entering customers for the longest time. I have seen all of the above.

But you can't create a transaction - quote or order or whatever - in the system for someone who doesn't have a customer ID in the system. So you're probably hearing from the order-putting-in person that they can't put the order in yet because you're not in the system as a customer yet.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:09 AM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'd agree overall with Lyn Never. The term "in the process of creating a SAP code" is like SAP itself. It means nothing or whatever you want it to mean, WRT the terms you've described (order from a new customer). In this scenario the "Client Code" setup and all that that implies (Ship-Tos, Credit, etc.) sounds like the situation.

There are of course other possibilities, but I'm not sure why other answers assume this is a distribution rather than manufacturing situation. Both require some kind of BOM configuration (what SAP calls the "Material Master"); complex in manufacturing and simple in distribution. (Since you're curious).

And since you looked into this, this is almost certainly not a matter of creating a new "transaction codes". They are referring to programming changes. You're having a data problem, not a program problem (assuming your requirements don't necessitate a change in your supplier's processes).
posted by achrise at 10:30 AM on December 17, 2015

Addressing the question of what "in the process of creating a SAP code" means, they're feeding you more or less internal jargon in the hopes that you'll be satisfied with the answer and stop bothering them. SAP is just the name of a software system, which (as noted already by others above) can have a myriad of different configurations depending on the business, so there's not much in the way of concrete information you can actually glean from what they said, other than "there is an internal process delay that will likely take a week to resolve".

Whether this sort of delay is acceptable for you, or if you feel like you're entitled to more detail (I personally think you are), is a question you'll need to answer for yourself.
posted by Aleyn at 11:57 AM on December 18, 2015